Worth The Wait
by honest-brain
Summary: Soulmate AU: Shortly after his fifth birthday, Sirius Black's soulmate stops all communication with him, and he concludes that something terrible must have happened to his soulmate. Just before his fifth birthday, Remus Lupin is bitten by a werewolf and changed into a monster. And he knows monsters don't get to have soulmates.
1. First Impressions

**Worth the Wait**

Summary: Shortly after his fifth birthday, Sirius Black's soulmate stops all communication with him, and he concludes that something terrible must have happened to his soulmate. He vows to find out what has happened to his soulmate and never love another until he knows for sure.

Just before his fifth birthday, Remus Lupin is bitten by a werewolf. After he is irrevocably changed forever, his soulmate no longer answers him directly, and Remus can only assume that he knows the truth and is disgusted by what Remus has become. After all, he knows monsters don't get to have soulmates.

 **Chapter One: First Impressions**

Chapter Summary: Sirius Black and Remus Lupin finally find out what their soulmate mark is and the existence of each other.

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No one knew for certain how soulmates or marks worked, because it seemed as though there were countless ways to be marked. Some people had never-changing phrases on their skin that would darken at the right moment, others had black lined drawings that would bleed with colors when they found their soulmate, and others still had what seemed to be nothing. Sirius Black fell into the latter category. Both his arms were unmarked ever since he could remember.

When his brother was born, Regulus Black had a tiny uncolored feather on the inside of his left wrist. Looking at it always made Sirius burn bright with jealousy. When he asked his mother about this, he was told that as a Black, he shouldn't concern himself with such nonsense. What did soulmates matter when his life was already planned out for him? His future was already decided for him, and it would be better than anything his soulmate could offer. Sirius noted that his mother's gray words on her wrist were still that—gray. Sirius was never allowed close enough to his father to pull at his sleeves to see if his father's wrist was similarly unmarked.

It was on a cold November day, a couple of weeks after his fourth birthday, that he noticed something on his wrist. It was tiny, and if he hadn't looked upon his own terribly boring, unmarked skin for ages he would have missed it. But the longer he stared at it, the larger the tiny red dot grew. Unsymmetrically, as if by accident, almost like a smudge. Sirius could feel his pulse race underneath the skin of his wrist. He could feel the magic and excitement of what this all meant. He watched, transfixed as the red slowly became smudged with blue, turning into a badly mixed purple, and he wondered what his soulmate was doing. It seemed like paint. Sirius smiled, his heart filled with a lightness he didn't know could exist.

Sirius stumbled over to his desk, not wanting to take his eyes off his arm, but at the same time, wanting to let his soulmate know about him. _I'm here too,_ he thought as he looked around his desk for the bottle of ink. He frowned slightly when he realized he couldn't reciprocate in color, but black ink was all he was allowed to have for his quills. Forgoing said quill, Sirius dipped his right index finger into the inkwell, then hesitated.

What if his soulmate didn't want him? Mother had never matched with her soulmate, and he assumed his father hadn't either. Sirius bit his lip as all the words his mother had said about soulmates came back to him. About how the whole business was unnecessary rubbish. And if his mother had already planned his future, what good would it do to get to know his soulmate if he couldn't have them?

In his hesitation, a drop of ink spilled from his fingertip onto this forearm, marring the graceful mix of reds and blues ( _and greens!—when had that happened?_ ) with a tiny drop of black. Sucking in a deep breath, Sirius carefully spelled out the word 'Hi' on his forearm and waited.

It wasn't long before there was a shaky, yet deliberate, tracing of his simple word in a bright pink color, swallowing the black. Beneath the word, his soulmate had also added two pink dots, and an upside down arc below them. _A smiling face,_ Sirius thought. He quickly hurried to copy the face with his own ink stained finger, his own face mirroring the expression he had on his arm.

Sirius Black wondered if it was possible to fall in love with someone you didn't know at all.

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Ever since he could remember, the two most favorite things in the world for Remus Lupin were his parents' forearms. His mother had delicate floral designs, twisting and weaving in and out of vines running down from elbow to wrist, each filled with the softest pastel watercolors he had ever seen. If he closed his eyes and imagined really hard, Remus could almost smell the flowers and drift off, as if he was actually in a meadow in the wild.

His father, on the other hand, had the sea painted on him. The color of the ocean changed from different blues to a seafoam green to almost pitch black at times, and the sea creatures were never the same. Octopus tentacles, glittering fish scales, and Remus even once saw an angel fish in the dark. He loved touching his father's moving scenery almost as much as he loved his mother's constant peacefulness of flowers. He felt safe and protected in either of his parents' arms.

It sometimes made him a little sad that he didn't have anything on his own arms, but his mother was always quick to remind him that before she had met his father, her own designs were a lot duller and completely devoid of color. "You're young, love. You've got all the time in the world for your arm to bloom," she said, and he giggled at her flower reference. He tried not to think about his own arms too much after that.

As a child, Remus loved spending time with his mother while his father worked and traveled for business. He loved baking with her, and helping her garden (even if he did fall asleep outside more often than not). Whenever she tried out a new hobby, she was always sure to include him. It was thanks to his mother's random interest in finger painting that he learned what his soulmate mark was.

As careful as he was to keep the paints only on his fingers, it inevitably drifted down to his hands, wrists and forearms. As he focused intently on the paper in front of him, he almost startled when he heard his mother gasp.

"Oh, Remus, look!" She came over to him and pointed at his arm, where two black letters were staring up at him. He certainly had no memory of writing on his own skin.

Without thinking, he started tracing the black letters on his skin. Were they from his soulmate? His heart started beating faster with wonder. He had one! There was someone out there for him. He wasn't forgotten, after all. Not that he doubted his mother much, but it was comforting to know that what his soulmate mark finally was.

He grinned up at his mother to see her smiling back at him. "Mum, what does it say?"

"It says hi darling. It's in English," she said as she kissed him on his head.

Remus carefully drew a smiley face underneath the letters. _His soulmate was so smart_ , he thought. He felt his body flush with warmth when, a minute later, black ink traced his smiley face back at him.

"They like me!" he exclaimed, and his mother laughed.

"Well, of course!" she said and scooped him into her arms to kiss him everywhere.

Remus let out a squeal of laughter and he halfhearted struggled in his mother's arms, getting paint everywhere his tiny hands could reach. It felt like his world had finally bloomed in color.


	2. Black

**Worth the Wait**

 **Chapter Two: Black**

Summary: Walburga Black has never met her soulmate, and Sirius Black wishes he could meet his.

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Walburga Black was born into the world screaming. When her lungs tired out, she continued in her mind. Screaming and raging against everything life threw at her. Sometimes, she felt as if her screaming was a backdrop to her life. Always there. Walburga once wondered if she would ever know peace.

Childhood had not been easy for her. Lessons upon lessons with tutors and nothing but cold negligence from her parents. _It is unbecoming of Black to want,_ she had been told once, when she asked for her mother's company on a particularly lonely day. She didn't dare ask for her father after that. Her brothers were no better. They were crueler, as children often are. They picked on her and tormented her, and yet were never punished because they were sons. Walburga learned many truths quickly when growing up, and one was that to have a son was infinitely worthier than having a daughter.

Sometimes, her only solace was the fact that she had tiny words written on her arm—the mark of her soulmate. She was destined for someone, and someone was destined for her. She wondered when she would meet them. What they'd be like. How they would treat her. If they could quiet her mind at last, make all the screaming and anger stop and go silent so she could finally know what it was like to think of nothing. It was because of these words that she strived to learn her letters as quickly as possible.

 _You're so quiet sometimes, I wonder if you're lonely,_ they read. When Walburga first read them, she scoffed. As if she had ever had a moment of peace in her house. Or mind. She was always being told that she talked much more than was acceptable of a lady, and a Black lady at that. Her knuckles were always in a state of flux between being bruised and bloody and healed perfectly so that the world would not know how badly behaved she was. But even when her skin was mended to be unbroken, the pain was always there as a constant reason for the screaming in her head to continue.

As she grew older, she learned how to speak less. She learned about duty, honor, purity and what her future had in store for her. The words on her wrist were only something of a childhood fancy she willingly left behind. The idea of a soulmate seemed absurd, because she knew no other person would offer her solace from her screaming mind.

When her engagement to Orion Black, _a cousin_ , was announced, she accepted it despite the twinge in her heart and the ache in her throat. She would not go against her family. She would be obedient and duty bound, and she would do it well. It didn't matter that she had no feelings any which way toward Orion. And it certainly didn't matter that the words on her wrist would be gray forever.

Orion confessed to her five months into their marriage that he did not love her. Walburga almost laughed at him. _Love is not necessary for a Black,_ she had told him. She reached over to him, and placed her hand on his forearm. Her mind wanted to yell at him. Wanted to yell that she knew of his infidelity and indiscretions, and _how dare he_. How dare he be so weak as to stray from duty for something as meaningless as _desire_. Instead, she quietly told him that _duty was the only thing that mattered_.

When Sirius was born screaming, Walburga physically recoiled from her son with such force that she accidentally broke all the glass in the Manor. Her internal screaming rivaled that of her son and her magic spun out of control.

"Shut him up!" she yelled. _Shut him up shut him up shuthim up shuthimup shuthimup!_ It seemed as though all of her years of hard work controlling herself broke down in an instant with the wailing of the infant. Walburga wanted nothing more than to quietly snuff out his life. No good would come from this screaming child, she knew. She could already feel the monstrous boy tearing her apart.

In the end, the healers took the babe out of the room, unable to soothe his crying, and left her alone with her husband. She felt like screaming still.

"Walburga," Orion spoke, and she turned to look at him with wild eyes, wet with frustration and hatred. "You're so quiet sometimes," he said and she felt her traitorous heart jump to her throat.

 _No,_ she thought. _Not him_ , her mind screamed at her. _Not. Him._

"I didn't expect this outburst to come out of you. See to it that it doesn't again."

"Leave!" she snarled at him, and she could feel the something else in the house shatter. She could feel everything falling apart. Rage was tight in her throat, ready to scream out. Her hands curled tightly into fists, nails puncturing her skin. She could even taste copper in her mouth. "Get out!" she screamed at him again, unable to stop. "Get out! Get out! Get out!"

Orion left with a look of distaste on his face, and Walburga could feel her throat starting to constrict. Her cheeks were wet, but she refused to acknowledge her tears. She wanted to scream at him more, amidst all the shattered glass from the windows in her room. She wanted to rip him apart. She wanted to rip Sirius apart, reach down into his tiny throat and pull out his vocal cords to silence him. She wanted to yell at him and tell him no good would come from his screaming. No good had come from hers, after all.

Walburga spent the night screaming herself hoarse.

In the morning, she quietly decided that Sirius would not be her legacy. She would not have a screaming child be her mark on the world.

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When he woke up the morning after learning about his soulmate, Sirius was slightly saddened to see the colors gone from his skin. The only remnants left from the night before were his—the word 'Hi' and a black smiling face he had traced. He figured his soulmate had washed off the paint before going to bed. He thought about washing the ink off his skin, but decided to leave it. It'd be a nice reminder for his soulmate, he figured.

When Kreacher called him down for breakfast, he instinctively covered his arms with long sleeves. He already knew that his revelation the night before was meant to be a secret, especially from his mother. She wouldn't approve.

It wasn't long into breakfast before his mother scolded him about smiling. Unbecoming of Black to show that much emotion, she had told him. Sirius bit part of his bottom lip and clenched his jaw in response, trying to keep a neutral face. His right hand rubbed over his left forearm, reminding himself that there was at least one person out there that would let him smile. He'd just have to wait. But it wouldn't be forever. He wouldn't end up like his mother, unhappy and always shouting at every little thing.

"And stop fidgeting!"

He sat still, clasping his hands together neatly in his lap. "Sorry, Mother."

Sirius went through the rest of the day being reminded to behave himself. He was restless, the constant urge to check his arm was always at the back of his mind. He struggled to pay attention to his tutor when all he wanted to do was try to communicate more with his soulmate. He marveled at the idea that there was a person somewhere out there that was happy to willingly be his friend. Sirius paused in his writing exercises. Was his soulmate even his friend? How did one even make friends? All of Sirius's friends were his cousins, and—his face scrunched up particularly at the thought of his cousin Bellatrix—they weren't very nice to him.

"Master Black, is there a problem?"

Sirius blinked, looking up at his tutor. A gray, balding old man with sharp, wire frame glasses stood staring back at him. Sometimes, if Sirius squinted with one eye, he could reduce his tutor to nothing more than a giant gray blob of strict rules and no sense of humor at all.

"No," he murmured and resumed his writing. He wondered if his soulmate was subject to early and long lessons like his. Maybe that could be something they could bond over. Sirius made an effort to concentrate on his lessons—after all, he couldn't write to his soulmate if he didn't know how to read or write.

Dinner with his mother couldn't end fast enough for Sirius. He was anxious to go back to his room for the night and lift up his sleeve to see if there was anything new from his soulmate. He wondered what his soulmate's name was too. If not for fear of punishment, he would have raced up the stairs to his bedroom.

Once in the safety of his own room, he pulled up the sleeve of his left arm and immediately smiled at the bright blue "Hello" written neatly above his black "Hi". Moving quickly into his private bathroom, he grabbed a washcloth and began wiping away his previous work.

Walking back into his bedroom with his still wet washcloth in hand, Sirius sat at his desk and carefully took out his quill and ink. Lamenting the fact that he still only had black ink to work with, he dipped his quill and carefully wrote "Hello soulmate" beneath the blue word on his wrist.

Sirius frowned when there wasn't an immediate response, but he decided he could wait. He put his quill down and lay both his arms flat on the desk. He hoped his soulmate responded soon. Sirius didn't care much for waiting and didn't have the best patience. Probably something he got from his mother, he thought with a frown. He started kicking his legs, able to move freely without his mother or a tutor or even Kreacher to yell at him to be still and proper.

"Come on, soulmate," he said, poking at empty flesh beneath his writing, willing more ink to appear on his arm.

It was a few more minutes before another smiling face appeared below his writing, this time in orange, and Sirius smiled. He wondered what life was like with so much color, and his heart ached at the thought that someday his soulmate might be the one to show him. With the same orange color, writing began to appear on his skin beneath the smiling face. It was in a shaky handwriting, definitely worse than Sirius's own (obviously no early and long lessons for his soulmate then), but also distinctly different from the handwriting on his wrist in bright blue.

Sirius frowned. Did his soulmate not write the first hello? He picked up his quill, intent on writing a question to his soulmate but paused when it looked like there was more orange ink coming. There was an orange circle, with a vertical line extending below it, ending in an upside down V. Two more lines were added before Sirius realized that his soulmate drew a person, though admittedly very crudely. Two orange eyes were added to the face, and another smile. Hair was added to the top, and Sirius couldn't help but smile. He waited for more, tiny legs kicking back and forth in the air in contentment instead of impatience.

Before too long, more writing appeared on his arm, this time in pink, and the handwriting matched the bright blue at the top. Sirius blinked, waiting curiously for it to finish.

"R hasn't learned English yet," Sirius read aloud. His eyes lit up. R! The beginning of a name! Sirius paused in his excitement, pouting at his arm. His soulmate couldn't read yet? That was a bit disappointing. How was he supposed to communicate without words?

Tiny orange hearts and stars started appearing around the words and stick human figure on his arm, and Sirius had an idea strike him. Grabbing his washcloth, he gently wiped away his two words to make more room. Picking up his quill, he drew tiny dots in the space and connected them with lines in the pattern of Canis Major. He noticed that his soulmate had paused while he started drawing, and he wondered if his soulmate was staring intently at their arm, waiting for him to finish.

Sirius debated on whether or not to circle his star. He didn't know his soulmate's name yet. Just the first letter. He figured his own name could wait for another night. After all, he had plenty of time to get to know his soulmate. There was no rush.

He watched as his soulmate traced out Canis Major in orange, drawing tiny stars in the place of his dots. "I wish you were here," he whispered to his arm, feeling the first tendrils of sleep invading his consciousness.


	3. Lupin

**Worth the Wait**

 **Chapter Three: Lupin**

Summary: Hope met her soulmate, and it was almost right out of a fairytale.

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Hope Lupin (née Howell) had always loved fairytales ever since she was a little girl. Stories about girls daring to go off on an adventure (whether willingly or not), and finding their way back home. Sometimes the same girl, sometimes different and changed, but still fundamentally the girl that was brave enough to go in the first place. She had always wanted to be brave enough to be that girl.

Aside from light-hearted teasing from her friends, no one really bothered her about her fascination and obsession with fairytales and magic. When she learned about soulmates and what the gray vines and flowers on her arm meant, she secretly hoped her soulmate was a fantastical wizard, ready to magically sweep her off her feet with a spell when they would finally meet.

(When she found out that Lyall actually was a wizard, and that he actually had used a spell during their first encounter to fend off a boggart, she did a remarkable job keeping her cool in front of him—so much so that he almost thought that she had been exposed to magic before. It was the best acting Hope had ever done in her life.)

Meeting Lyall Lupin had been like a dream. He was charming and handsome (all tall and strong lines and dark hair)—like the princes of fairytales. But he was also funny and considerate and _kind_ and he listened to her. And she couldn't remember the last time a man she dated had actually listened to her. She had a tight feeling in her chest that told her falling in love with Lyall Lupin was inevitable.

Somewhere along their six months of dating, Hope had started to notice little specks of color filling in the vines and flowers on her arm. Though they made her smile, Hope resorted to wearing long sleeves after that. She didn't want Lyall to know, and she didn't want him to feel any sort of obligation to her. It was enough, she figured, for her to just love him and enjoy his company. Fairytales were never about love, after all. They were always about _the girl_. And in her own story, Hope would be that girl.

It was around month eight that Lyall had finally decided to show her his forearm. He had always worn long sleeves ever since they met. After finding out about magic, Hope had always assumed it was a difference of fashion between his wizarding world and her ordinary one. She had almost cried when she saw that his right forearm was filled with different blues and tiny, moving flashes of different sea creatures.

"Since when?" she asked, chewing on her bottom lip and wondering if now was also a good time to show him her arm.

"Ages ago," he answered. "I didn't want you to feel as if you had to like me back. You might not, even! I don't exactly know how this works. No one does, really, not even the Grand—"

Hope pulled him into a soft kiss. She always knew when he was about to ramble due to his nerves, and while she found it endlessly endearing, now was not the time for that.

"Lyall, oh Lyall," she whispered. She pulled back the sleeve of her cardigan and showed him her own garden wall of flowers and vines.

"Oh," he spoke, almost in reverence. He lifted his fingers and gently traced the lines on her arm. He placed a gentle, chaste kiss on her cheek before nuzzling into her neck, which elicited a giggle from her. "I had hoped," he said, "that when you started wearing sleeves all the time, this would be the reason."

"It was," she confirmed, threading her fingers through his hair while he placed tiny kisses on her neck. Her heart thrummed with pleasure and an almost unbearable lightness. She felt like she was seconds from drifting off from the park bench and into the night sky had it not been for Lyall's comforting weight holding her down.

"Would you want to marry me?" he asked her, almost so quietly that she didn't hear him.

"Are you proposing to me, Lyall?" Hope could feel her heart start to beat faster. The rest of her life spent with Lyall Lupin. Could she imagine that? She breathed in the night air, lightly scented with wildflowers that surrounded them. She could, she realized, as her joints ached with want. She could spend the rest of her life with this wonderful man she had met.

"No," he said as he lifted his head up from her neck, a faint red smudged across both his cheeks like something out of a painting. Hope could feel something starting howl in her gut as she thought about monsters in fairytales.

She knew Lyall had seen that something was bothering her because he took both of her hands in his, thumbs rubbing across both sets of knuckles. There was a tender smile on his face, and Hope thought about wolves in sheeps' clothing.

"When," Lyall stressed, "I propose to you, I want to it to be sweeping you off your feet perfect. Think of this as a pre-proposal."

Hope collapsed forward into Lyall's chest and laughed with relief. She could feel him gather her more comfortably in his arms, kissing her lightly on her head.

"You have a horrible sense of humor," she told him, and she could feel the telling vibrations in his chest that meant he was laughing.

"Got you to laugh though," he said.

"Horrible," she repeated, with a smile.

"I'm sorry," he said as he kissed her. "I love you."

"I know." Hope rolled her eyes and felt her skin tingle as if she had been dipped in fairy dust. She took Lyall's face in her hands and looked at him. She took in the strong line of his wide jaw, his dark eyebrows that provided such a nice frame for the rest of his face to follow. She loved his eyes—a shimmering honey brown, bright and full of adventure. His long nose split his face perfectly and rested on top of his smooth lips. A sudden sense of longing and clarity ripped its way through her, and she said, "Marry me."

"Yes," he answered before she had even finished and leaned forward to kiss her.

"Oh my god." Hope shuffled back along the park bench, face tilted upwards at the sky and laughing. "I can't believe I just proposed to you!"

"Can't take it back now," he joked, kissing the palm of her right hand.

Hope groaned. "Worst proposal ever," she said, eliciting a full, deep laugh from Lyall. She could feel her toes curling in her shoes from happiness. Her pinky finger on her right hand twitched against Lyall's hands. Her heart was fizzing, as if it was a tablet of citric acid and sodium bicarbonate dissolving in a glass of water, and she wondered if this was what it felt like to be standing at the intersection of love and magic.

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Truth be told, Remus Lupin, though he loved stories (especially the Muggle fairytales his mother told him), had never really been invested in learning how to read and write. He knew the basic Welsh alphabet, and on particularly good days, would also remember the English alphabet and its corresponding sounds. It helped that there were some common over laps between the two. But since his mother usually read him bedtime stories and would always be there when he wanted her to read a book to him, he figured he could delay sitting at a boring desk and learning for a little while longer. There were more interesting and important fun to be had, after all.

His opinion quickly changed upon seeing his soulmate's nice handwriting in English.

"Dad!" he shouted when his father came home from his weeklong trip after his mother had cleaned him up from their painting session. "Dad, dad, dad!" He ran at Lyall with his arms up, knowing he'd be picked up.

His father laughed as he picked up Remus and hugged him close, planting a sloppy kiss on the boy's cheek. "Did—" Lyall started to ask, but was quickly interrupted by his son.

"Look look!" Remus shoved his left arm towards his father's face, accidentally hitting Lyall on the nose. He could hear his mother laughing behind him as she came over to them.

"Oomphf." Lyall pulled his head back slightly to get a clearer view of the arm, marked with a black "Hi" and a smiley face below it. He shot Hope a puzzled look, and she pointed to the vines and flowers on her arm, mouthing the word _soulmate_. "Oh," he said, turning back to Remus with a smile.

"They like me," Remus whispered, acting like it was a very important secret. Lyall could see Hope smiling as she leaned against the couch in their living room. Lyall's heart warmed at the sight.

"Who wouldn't like you?" Lyall asked his son fondly, right hand moving so he could run his fingers through Remus's hair, making the little boy giggle.

"I need to learn how to read and write." Remus's face scrunched up at the thought, wrinkles forming around his nose and his lips puckering outward. "In English!"

Lyall let out a laugh and placed a kiss on Remus's nose. "It's not so bad. I promise."

"We can start tomorrow," Hope said, moving closer to the pair and placing a kiss on Lyall's cheek and Remus's head. "It's someone's bedtime now."

"Yeah, Dad, go to sleep!"

Lyall snorted and shuffled Remus around in his arms, earning squeals of laughter from the boy. "I'll tuck him in tonight, yeah?" he told his wife and quickly kissed her before walking towards his son's room.

Once Remus was snug underneath his covers, he turned to his dad. "Can you tell me when your arm started to turn blue again?" He rubbed his eye and could hear his father chuckle somewhere above him. He could feel his father settle in beside him on top of his covers, and Remus closed his eyes. His father's hand gently combed through his hair, lulling him to sleep. As his father recounted a story Remus now knew by heart, he wondered what his own meeting with his soulmate would be like.


	4. Mother

**Worth the Wait**

 **Chapter Four: Mother**

Summary: Sirius Black wishes he didn't have a mother at all, but instead he gets an offer for a second one.

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Over the course of the next few months, Sirius slowly started to get to know his new friend better. Every time he saw something new on his arm, it was like there was a pleasantly mild tickling charming humming beneath his skin. He found out that his soulmate lived in Wales (which after consulting a map he was disappointed to find out was too far away to visit), was younger than him by a few months (his birthday was in March!), and was a _boy_.

Sirius didn't know how he felt about the last one. On the one hand, he was kind of disappointed that he hadn't gotten a romantic soulmate, but on the other hand, he wasn't talking to an icky girl (because all the girls he knew—namely his cousins—were mean to him). At least he was spared _that_ torture. In the end, he decided that he wasn't unhappy with the fact that R was a boy. He did wish he'd know his name though, but he supposed that could wait until later. Hopefully not too much later, but Sirius was trying to learn patience and he figured this was as good a lesson as any.

His soulmate didn't have a tutor like himself, which wasn't all that surprising to Sirius seeing as his soulmate hadn't yet learned how to read or write anywhere near his level. Most of their written communication was with his soulmate's mother (the idea of a nice and helpful mother was alien to Sirius) since his soulmate's primary language was Welsh. Sirius once tried to ask his tutor to teach him Welsh, but that was quickly shut down. It was also brought to his mother's attention, and Sirius learned quickly to never mention anything related to his new friend out loud again.

But that didn't stop him from writing. He wrote about little things he had always wanted to tell a friend (that he sometimes told his brother when he was allowed to see him). He wrote about his life and his childhood and while he wasn't miserable per se, he was definitely lonely. He wrote about how he was glad to have such a nice soulmate and how he couldn't wait till they met and how he already knew they'd be the best of friends. Sometimes he faltered when he thought about them being best friends. Doubts would creep up on him because, well, he had never really had a friend, had he? He didn't know everything about soulmates but surely not everyone was best friends with their soulmate?

He thought about his mother and her gray words and couldn't help but wonder if maybe she did meet her soulmate, but they still stayed gray. Maybe his parents were actually soulmates but they just didn't like each other. Nights when all he could think about were his mother's unhappy words were the worst. He would curl up underneath his blanket and couldn't stand to look at his arm in case there was a rejection there. He didn't want to end up like his mother. He wanted to be best friends with his soulmate. He wanted to love his soulmate.

Thankfully those nights never lasted long.

Once, after a particularly bad lesson and terrible dinner party where he misbehaved, his mother had him punished. Kreacher, of course, would take care of the punishment, and afterwards, his mother would lazily use magic to make sure there were no lasting physical damage on his body.

"We must rid you of this terrible behavior and disobedience soon, Sirius. You won't be fit for children's punishments much longer," she told him as she sent him off to bed.

Those words sent a chill down his spine and he immediately knew she was referring to the traditional family punishment. Bellatrix never let him forget that the Cruciatus Curse was the proper way to punish "terribly naughty boys" like him in the Black family. She was starting Hogwarts in the fall and had already gotten her wand early in June for "practice". Sirius did his best to avoid her whenever she had her wand. She was bad enough without it, he didn't want to find out how dreadful she could be with it.

That night, with tears and a stubbornly runny, snotty nose, Sirius grabbed his inkwell and quill and retreated to his bed. Uncapping it carefully and placing it on his nightstand he started writing to his soulmate about how horrible his family was and how he was sure his mother hated him. She was never cruel to Regulus, though part of him supposed it might be harder to be cruel to a toddler than to a child. He wrote about how alone and unloved he felt and how he wish he had a better mother. Or maybe no mother at all.

Sirius fell asleep with black ink scrawled all over his arm, smudging in some places with tears or from touching his sheets.

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Even though Remus couldn't completely read all of his soulmate's words, he tended to have a very good understanding when something was bad. And when he saw tonight's black ink messily and hastily written on his skin, he knew something Very Bad was happening.

"Mum!" he shouted, running to the kitchen where she was baking tomorrow night's dessert. "Mum! Mum!"

He could feel his chest constricting as he ran, and his eyes were starting to water.

"Remus!" Hope picked him up before he could run into anything dangerous and held him close, trying to soothe her son. "Calm down, love. What's wrong?"

In response, he showed her his arm, which was rapidly filling up with black in that there was scarcely any skin left. Frowning, Hope doubled checked that nothing in the kitchen needed her immediate attention and walked over to the kitchen counter and set Remus down. "Hey, it's alright, Remus," she shushed him, wiping gently at his tears.

"Something's wrong with him," Remus whispered. "He's not feeling good—I can tell." His bottom lip trembled and his bright brown eyes were filling up with tears again.

Hope kissed him tenderly on his forehead and angled his body so she could read what was written on his forearm, holding Remus close to her as she did so. She could feel him shaking and sniffling and trying his best not to cry even harder.

"He's…" Hope didn't know what to say. It was clear that the other boy (Star, Remus had referred to him as) was unhappy and miserable. Hope couldn't tell if he was in physical pain but judging by the content of his writing she wouldn't have doubted it. "He's not in a very good place right now," she said finally.

"How do we fix it?" Remus asked in a small voice, slumping against his mother's chest.

Hope's heart tugged and ached, both at her son's pain and the other boy's. _I wish I didn't have a mother at all_ was written across her son's skin towards the end of his arm, and she couldn't stop from rereading that one sentence over and over again. She felt a fear wash over her, prickling across her skin and pulled Remus tighter against her. Unwanted memories of cold doctor's offices and metal instruments against her skin came over her. Multiple visits of hearing the same bad news over and over again until at last they'd gone to see a magical doctor ("They're called healers," Lyall had told her once) to get a potion for their problem. Hope could feel her throat starting to tighten as if there was a heavy hand on it, squeezing. She felt lightheaded, as if she wasn't breathing properly, and felt a sharp pain against the back of her right knee.

"Mum?" Gentle hands came up and dabbed at her wet cheeks, and Hope felt herself taking back her own body from phantom demons. "Are you sad too?"

"Yes," she whispered. "I'm sorry, Remus." She held him tighter and could feel that he was crying again. "I don't know how to fix this," she said. She couldn't remember when she had started crying, but she didn't how to stop. "I love you so, so much," she whispered. _'Please don't ever hate me,'_ remained unsaid and lodged in her throat.

"I know. I love you too," he mumbled. "And Dad," he added.

Hope gave a weak chuckle at that. "Dad too," she agreed. Hope pulled back and grabbed a nearby roll of paper towels. Tearing off a piece, she gently cleaned up Remus's face. "And Star?" she asked.

Remus nodded vigorously. "I love Star too."

"I know, sweetheart." She ran her fingers through his light brown hair, slightly wavy and curling at the ends—something he clearly got from Lyall. "We'll do something tomorrow, okay?"

"But—"

Hope gathered the four year old back into her arms, one hand still running through his hair in an attempt to soothe him. "It's late, Remus. And I think he fell asleep. See how your arm has more smudges now than five minutes ago?"

Remus nodded hesitantly. He knew Star tended to write very close to his bedtime, and that he'd leave the writing on his skin until it was washed off in the mornings. He almost always fell asleep before Remus.

"What are we going to do tomorrow?" he asked.

"We'll write to him and tell him how much we love him, okay?"

"Will that help?" Remus sniffed.

"Does it help you when you're feeling sad?" Remus nodded against his mother's chest. He couldn't think of a single time when he hadn't felt better after his parents told him how much they loved him. "Maybe it'll help him too, then." Remus hoped so.

Hope picked Remus up off the counter and started the walk to his bedroom. "Do you want a bedtime story tonight?" she asked.

"Yes, please," he mumbled, tired and boneless in her arms.

By the time he was changed into his pajamas and settled underneath his covers, Remus was barely conscious. Hope picked a random book of fairytales from his bookshelf and settled in on the bed next to him. She spoke in a soft, almost whisper, trying not to pull him back into consciousness, and by the time she finished the short book, there was a tiny droplet of water on the last page. She was crying again.

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Sirius Black awoke the next morning with a slight headache and black stained sheets. He went into his bathroom and quickly washed away the ink on his arm with a feeling of fear and shame. What if last night had ruined his relationship with his soulmate forever? There was nothing new on his skin, so clearly his soulmate hadn't written anything back. Sirius wasn't sure what exactly he was expecting, but a blank arm wasn't it, and it stung a little.

He got dressed wondering if maybe he was just a bit more behaved his mother would be kinder to him. Or at least, not as cruel. He wasn't sure if she was capable of kindness, but he knew she was at least able to lack cruelness. He gingerly poked at his blank arm before rolling down the sleeve and walking downstairs to breakfast. He wondered if his soulmate would ever talk to him again.

The day passed by in a blur, but it was punishment free. His mother rarely spoke to him, which he took as a blessing, and his tutor had nothing more to say than what his lessons required of him. He also hadn't seen Kreacher all day, and Sirius decided that he wouldn't willingly go looking for that wretched house elf if his life depended on it.

Dinner was a rare affair with both his parents present, though they sat on opposite ends and neither spoke to the other. He wondered if that was what his future dinners as an adult would be like. Long silences punctuated by moving silverware and chewing. Regulus wasn't deemed old enough to dine with them, and Sirius couldn't help but feel that if his brother was here, there'd at least be _some_ noise. He ate dinner quietly and quickly and did his best not to fidget in hopes of getting dismissed early.

Thankfully, his father had the same idea and dismissed both himself and Sirius, leaving Walburga to sit alone, hand curled tightly around a glass of wine. Sirius walked quickly up the stairs before his mother had a chance to shout at either him or his father, resisting the temptation to run.

Once inside his room, he grabbed his writing utensils and jumped into bed, ready to pen out an apology to his soulmate and a promise to keep all his problems to himself in the future. If he didn't like his unpleasant family, what right did he have to subject his soulmate to them via his secondhand stories?

But as he pulled up his sleeve, he saw that there were lines that filled up his entire forearm in two distinct handwritings, separated even further by different colored ink. Sirius read through the entire thing multiple times in disbelief.

He hadn't realized he was crying until his nose started running and he was forced to continuous sniff. Two lines stood out to him the most, one from R and the other from R's mother (Hope! She had finally signed her name! He had a name!), and Sirius felt a warm hum start in his chest. He didn't realize this was what love would feel like.

' _We can share my Mum'_ was what R had written in bright green, and Hope had written _'I'll be your loving mother, if you'd like'_ in a nice blue shade. Even amidst all the multiple _'I love you's,_ those two lines were his favorite. Sirius decided not to write anything tonight. He didn't want their words to be washed away or written over with black ink.

"Please don't be gone in the morning," he whispered before he fell asleep.

It was still there when he woke, not a single word smudged, and Sirius smiled.


	5. Five

**Worth the Wait**

 **Chapter Five: Five**

Summary: What happens inside 12 Grimmauld Place on November the third and the introduction of Regulus.

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November the third was a tense day in 12 Grimmauld Place. The shadow of Walburga Black's anger could be felt in every crack and crevice despite the fact that no one in the house ever saw her on this day. It had been that way ever since Sirius could remember. His tutoring lessons were always canceled and absolutely nothing was expected of him on that day. In fact, he spent most of the day in his room, and last year he hadn't even bothered to venture out. Meals were always cold and delivered to each person's room. No one ate in the dining room, and everyone maintained a tense, terrified silence. Even Regulus was quiet, though Sirius suspected that perhaps a silencing spell had been cast on him like it used to be cast on himself before he learned how to make no noise on this day. Sirius didn't exactly know why his birthday always caused his mother to disappear and the entire house to go silent, but he figured it was just another weird family tradition. Except no one talked about this one. Ever.

Sirius didn't mind being unofficially confined to his room this year. That only meant he could spend all day writing and drawing with his soulmate (and Hope). Although R's English had gotten better throughout the year, Sirius could tell he still relied heavily on Hope. R was always quicker to respond when they were communicating in pictures than when Sirius used words. Sirius didn't mind so much though, because having R draw pictures was better than having nothing at all.

Picking up his lunch tray from outside his door, Sirius crawled back into bed with his bottle of ink and quill. He had never communicated with his soulmate during the day before and was excited at the thought of getting to talk to R and Hope for hours instead of just mere minutes before he inevitably fell asleep. He wondered if he should start by telling them that today was his birthday, and that he was five years old now. Certifiably wiser and more mature than he had been yesterday. He wondered what Hope's reaction would be.

Taking a chance, he wrote out 'It's my birthday' on his arm and waited. He wondered what R did during the day and if he would even see what Sirius wrote. Placing his quill on his bedside table, he began to dig into his cold sandwich. It seemed liked even the house elves were doing minimal work today. Once he was finished with his sandwich he looked back at his arm and let out a surprised yelp. There, right below his declaration, was a messily drawn and colorful birthday cake with five candles (R's doing, no doubt), and written below it in Hope's handwriting was 'Happy birthday my little star!'

His attention was soon diverted from his arm as there was a low rumbling that went through the entire house, almost as if the house itself was heaving and getting ready to yell. He clasped both hands around his mouth and stayed very still. How could he have forgotten that today was a day of complete silence? Sirius shrunk back into his bed and curled up beneath his covers, both hands still tightly placed against his mouth. He shut his eyes and waited for the rumbling to stop. Somewhere, downstairs he could hear something shatter, and he flinched. Somewhere closer to the attic he could hear a muffled scream, though whether in anger or pain or sorrow, he couldn't tell.

This was the first time that he had remembered there being noise on this day. And now that he heard it, he hoped it would also be the last. He would take the almost oppressive silence to this terrifying uncertainty of whether or not the screaming and rumbling and shattering would come to his room next. He wondered if perhaps there was some secret monster that lived in 12 Grimmauld Place that could only come out on this day. He felt almost nauseous at the thought.

Slowly, the screaming upstairs stopped, and a few moments later, the house settled down again. Not quite silent, but more like an ordinary house than a living one. Sirius cautiously opened his eyes, blinking a bit to relieve some strain from having kept them squeezed shut for so long. He carefully removed his hands from his mouth, being absolutely sure not to utter a sound. He looked at his arm again, and there were more decorative stars and an attempt at Canis Major. Sirius silently traced R's inaccurate constellation (Sirius the star was really off and more left than the actual constellation, but Sirius would give his soulmate a pass for the effort). He let out a small, silent smile. He wondered if R's birthday in March had been a happy one. Hope had written happy birthday to him after all. He couldn't imagine what a real happy birthday would be like, but as he kept staring at his arm and seeing more stars added (and little red ovals with squiggly black lines coming out the bottom that Sirius couldn't figure out what they were supposed to be), he felt that today was definitely happier than his past birthdays. Reaching for his quill, he neatly wrote 'Thank you' wherever there was free space on his arm.

The rest of the day continued with various exchanges of pictures and a few words between Sirius and Hope every now and then. Sirius faltered a bit when the question of presents came up (children got presents on their birthdays?), but otherwise it was as pleasant as this day could be. By dinnertime, Sirius was surprised to find himself tired and sleepy despite not having done much that day. He went to bed without bothering with dinner that night, too tired to open his door to collect the cold dinner undoubtedly left out for him.

The next day, everything returned to normal within the Black household and absolutely no one spoke of anything that happened. Sirius went about his routine with breakfast, lessons, lunch, more lessons, and dinner. His mother was present at breakfast and dinner as was routine, but was remarkably paler than usual. Her white skin a dark contrast to her plum colored lipstick. There was a pained look in her eyes and a tension in her mouth when she curled her hands into fists, as she did most of the time Sirius saw her. Sirius was unsettled during breakfast and dinner. A part of him kept waiting for her to snap at him, but she stayed silent. She didn't speak a word the entire day.

It took a few days before Sirius could put the unease of his birthday completely behind him. His lessons had increased ("You're five now, Master Black. Time for more advanced lessons."), much to his displeasure. His tutor still hadn't gotten any less gray or boring, unfortunately.

After the new year, Regulus was finally allowed to start his own lessons (and sit for meals at the dining table with Sirius), so at least he wasn't alone with his tutor anymore. Both brothers were placed in the same room, sharing the same gray tutor, though he lectured each boy separately.

Sometimes Sirius would look at Regulus and wonder if he was ever that slow and unsteady when he was a toddler. Regulus was a strange boy, Sirius decided. He wasn't allowed to spend all that much time with the toddler, but even he could tell that. His brother always looked like he was on the edge of tears, with big watery eyes and a quivering lip. His slightly chubby hand struggled to hold the quill properly, and Sirius could tell that if given the choice Regulus would choose to be anywhere but in the library, being forced into lessons.

Sirius suddenly thought of R and how he definitely didn't have lessons (he could tell that without Hope's help they'd be awful at communicating in words with each other). He wondered if R was a pureblood. His stomach twisted at the thought, and he knew his answer. Sirius unconsciously put a protective hand on his left forearm. Staring at his brother struggling with even copying the alphabet, Sirius wondered if R was even capable of magic. _Real_ magic, not soulmate mark magic, because he knew even muggles had that. Something felt very heavy in his chest at the thought that R was a muggle.

His first thought was of his mother and the hateful line of her lips whenever there was talk of muggles and filthy blood and blood traitors. His second thought was of Hope and kindness and an offer for love. R couldn't be a muggle, he decided. He didn't fit anything his mother had said of muggles, and Hope definitely didn't fit either. They weren't muggles. They couldn't be.

"Master Black! Focus on your own work, please."

Sirius tore his gaze away from his brother and to his tutor. He squinted and only saw gray. "Sorry," he muttered before directing his eyesight back on the heavy tome in front of him. History of the Black family. Exceedingly dull. In the background, he could hear his tutor lecture his brother about the proper way to hold a quill, and he could hear sniffling. He didn't think he cried when his lessons had started. His brother was weird.

Sirius stared blankly at the book he was supposed to be reading. What if they were muggles? Maybe his mother was wrong about how all muggles were barbaric and uncivilized. He frowned. But _everyone_ agreed with his mother. This was silly, he decided. He didn't even know if they were muggles. Besides, didn't muggles have another language so that anything purebloods said wouldn't be understood by them?

 _R hasn't learned English yet,_ he remembered with a sense of panic. But he lived in Wales, Sirius tried to reason. Maybe Welsh wizards spoke Welsh? Were there even any wizards in Wales? Sirius thought there must be, even if he hadn't heard of them. After all, he hadn't heard of—he leaned forward and squinted his eye—Eduardus Limette Black before, and surely he existed. He was even in a book.

He'd have to ask them tonight, he thought. Only, he couldn't _just ask_ in case they were muggles. He'd have to be clever about it.

"Alright, why don't we take a little break, hm? I shall be back in fifteen minutes' time after a short discussion with your mother, Masters Black."

Sirius blinked and looked up to see his tutor walk out the library doors. He looked over at Regulus, who was still sniffling with tear streaks down his cheeks. His hands were stained with black ink and the sheet of parchment underneath his quill was messy with wet, leaky ink blobs. Sirius didn't remember ever being that messy and he was filled with dread about what their mother would say.

He got out of his seat and walked over to Regulus, whose eyes had widened. Regulus tried to wipe away his tears with his hands but Sirius moved quickly and caught his fists in time. "You'll get ink on your face, Reg," he said. "Just wait, okay?" Sirius moved to grab a handkerchief his tutor had left on the table and dipped part of it in the glass of water his tutor kept and magically refilled when he needed. He walked back to his brother and started cleaning his face, gently wiping away the tears and snot. Then he cleaned up Regulus's hands, making sure all the black ink was gone in case his mother decided to pay them a visit.

"Thank you," Regulus said in a small voice, and Sirius thought about his relationship with Hope.

"We're brothers," he said. "We've got to stick together, okay?" He felt Regulus move, and before he knew it, Sirius had a toddler hugging him, Regulus's chubby face pressed against his shoulder. "It's okay, Reg," he said, wrapping his arms around his brother. "I'll look after you."

By the time their tutor returned (alone—Sirius almost cried with relief), both boys were back in their sit. Sirius was pretending to read the history text and Regulus had a fresh sheet of parchment and quill, neatly lying side by side. The old man went over to Regulus's desk and started instructing the boy, a bit gentler this time, as if he had not made mistakes before the break. Sirius wondered what his mother had said.

Later that night, back in his bedroom, Sirius crawled into bed and pulled out the ink and quill he had started to keep in his bedside drawer. Tonight, his arm was covered from the inner elbow to wrist in streaks of color, forming a rainbow. Sirius again marveled at the idea of being allowed to have colors.

Chewing on his lip, he hesitantly wrote out a question to Hope. It was one thing for someone to offer something to you. But to ask? Sirius didn't have a lot of good experiences with asking for things. But he also didn't have a lot of bad experiences with Hope either, so he thought those two would cancel out.

' _Can my brother have a loving mother too?'_

Sirius waited for a reply, wondering if perhaps he was asking too much. But before his thoughts could spiral into something worse, he saw Hope's handwriting appear right beneath his. ' _Absolutely.'_ Sirius grinned and started to draw the Leo constellation, forgetting to ask whether or not Hope and R were muggles.


	6. Blame

**Worth the Wait**

 **Chapter Six: Blame**

Summary: Greyback bites Remus, and Hope and Lyall both blame themselves.

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Remus couldn't wait until it was his birthday. He couldn't wait until he was the same age as his soulmate again. He knew that it didn't really matter if they were the same age (his mother and father weren't—he asked), but it felt important that they were. Like both of them being five years of age somehow made them closer than Star being five while he was still just four years old.

Closing his eyes really tightly, he concentrated on making time go by faster. A week was too long to wait. _Five, five, five,_ he thought, willing it to be the tenth of March already.

"Remus," a voice whispered in his left ear. Remus didn't answer. His dad could wait until he was five, he decided. "Remus," his dad said again, this time with his fingers pressing lightly into Remus's sides. Remus tried very hard not to start giggling, but he couldn't help it as his dad started tickling him with purpose.

"Dad!" he laughed, opening his eyes and squirming in his dad's arms.

Lyall laughed as he shifted the child in his lap. "Did you do it? Are you five yet?"

Remus gasped loudly and struggled to stand up. "Am I?" he asked, his eyes wide. He started bouncing on his feet as his dad hummed and rubbed his chin with his right hand.

"Let's see," Lyall said. "Do you think five year olds are…" he paused, pulling Remus back into his arms. Remus looked at him with bright brown eyes and so much energy, Lyall couldn't help but smile as he leaned closer. "Ticklish?" he whispered before attacking his son once again, eliciting loud shrieks of laughter from the boy. "Well," he said loudly, over Remus's laughter, "I guess you're still four."

"Nooo," Remus giggled, involuntarily swinging his limbs every which way to bat away his dad's fingers. "I tried so hard!" He protested, gasping for breath as his father finally stopped tickling him. He could feel his dad's chest vibrate as he was pulled in for a hug. Remus smiled, delighted at his dad's laughter.

"A week's not so long, I promise," Lyall said, running one hand up and down Remus's back. "Besides," he continued as he gently pulled Remus from him so that they could look at each other. "Your mother likes that you're four years old. Give her another week, huh?"

"Hmmm, okay." Remus guessed if staying four years old for another week would make his mother happy, he'd stop trying to make time move faster. "No more time travel," he promised, holding out his pinky finger with all the seriousness he could muster.

"No more time travel," Lyall agreed, trying to keep a straight face as he made a pinky promise with his son. He felt his lips twitch and knew he was somewhat smiling, but Remus didn't seem to mind. "Now, why don't we go help your mum with dinner, hm?"

Remus nodded enthusiastically and threw his arms up in the air, waiting for his dad to pick him up and carry him to the kitchen where his mother was.

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Three days later, Lyall apparated a short distance from his home and walked home in a mix of anger and unease. _Greyback,_ he thought. That was a name he would not soon forget. He was certain the disheveled and dirty man he had seen earlier in questioning at his job was a werewolf and, more importantly, _the_ werewolf responsible for the death of two muggle children last month. The next full moon was tomorrow night, and he was certain that more children would suffer and die by the hands of that monster, and there was nothing he could do about it. He was unable to convince the ministry to detain Greyback, and Lyall could already see the blood that would be on his hands.

He shuddered as he thought about those yellow eyes, and how they turned from false confusion into something predatory as Greyback was escorted from the room to be freed. He could have sworn those eyes had locked onto him, and him alone. Were it not for the ministry standard to place memory charms on any muggles brought in for questioning, Lyall would have had no doubt in his mind that Greyback would come after him specifically for retribution.

A sense of shame flooded him when he remembered the words he spoke in anger—his careless generalization of all werewolves. But the blood and death of those two muggle children—one girl around ten years old and one boy around Remus's age—would not leave his mind. They had caught the werewolf responsible, he _knew_ it. And they had let him go.

"Like a werewolf would even have a wand," he scoffed, thinking about the flimsy excuse that persuaded the idiot Hitchens that Greyback couldn't be anything but a muggle. And of course, Carter, the third committee member, was too overworked and too exhausted to do anything else but agree with Hitchens, leaving Lyall outnumbered.

Lyall saw his house come up in the distance, and paused in his walking. He took several deep breaths, trying to calm himself down and erase all the lingering agitation and discomfort he felt with today's case. It wouldn't do any good to bring his work home to Hope or Remus. And it wouldn't be fair either.

A sudden image of Remus lying on the ground, his body bitten in several places, limbs awkwardly lying about, broken and with flesh hanging off flashed into Lyall's mind. He could feel the same nausea he felt when he first looked at the pictures of the two muggle children a couple of weeks ago. _The boy had been about Remus's age,_ he thought, and turned and vomited. He felt his whole body sag with fear and exhaustion.

"Obliviated," he reminded himself. "Ministry protocol. Obliviated." He took out his wand and cleaned up the mess he made. "Remus is safe," he said to himself. "Remus is safe."

He started walking towards home again, a little faster this time, eager to see proof that Remus was still bright eyed and laughing and breathing. His fear was irrational, he tried to reason. Greyback wouldn't target him. Greyback wouldn't have even remembered him. Ministry protocol was to use memory charms on all muggles. Ministry protocol was to use memory charms. Ministry protocol.

Lyall ran the rest of the way home and used magic to spell the door open, too anxious to use his key. "Remus? Hope?" he called out, and was met immediately with shouts from the kitchen to his relief. He took a moment to compose himself before venturing into the kitchen.

Hope and Remus were both sitting on the floor, taking turns writing and drawing on Remus's arm. He noticed that Hope was also watching the oven, and the scent of roasted chicken hit him.

"Hi Dad!" Remus had briefly glanced up at him (with eyes that were alive with light and not glazed over like the dead) before returning his attention to his arm.

"They're talking about Remus's birthday and how he's _practically_ five years old even though it's still days away," Hope explained, and Lyall let out a weak laugh at that.

Sitting down next to her, he planted a kiss on her cheek before reaching out for Remus. _Alive_ , he thought as he held Remus in his lap. _Safe._

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Hope felt like everything was moving in slow motion, and no matter what she did, she couldn't force her body to move faster or her brain to process things faster. She was the last one to Remus's room, and all she could see was blood. The window was shattered, and whatever evil shadow that had been lurking in the room had fled through it. Lyall was looming over their son, shielding his body from Hope's view as he cast spell after spell as she stood back, petrified. She knew better than to interfere and break his concentration.

The smell of blood was everywhere, and she could still hear Remus's scream in the background. Blood and screaming and pain. It felt like there was ice in her heart and lungs. She couldn't breathe.

Lyall was saying something to her but she couldn't understand him. He had something in his arms, but she didn't want to look. She knew what—who—he was carrying, but she couldn't look. Couldn't look at her son like that. What kind of mother could?

Lyall was speaking again. He grabbed her hand this time and she followed him to the chimney in their living room. Her stomach sank as she realized what was going to happen.

"St. Mungo's," Lyall said, and she understood. She watched him go first, green flames eating away the blood and pain and screaming.

She reached into the pot on the mantle and shakily grabbed a handful of floo powder. She stepped into the fireplace and repeated what Lyall had done. "St. Mungo's," she said before waiting for the whirlwind of green fire to surround her. She stepped out into the hospital reception area and resisted the urge to vomit. She hadn't thought she'd have to go back here ever again.

Memories of the last visit came back to her, inciting another fresh wave of nausea. She remembered the wand being pointed at her, and the potion vial she held in her hand as she left. She couldn't remember the doctor's— _healer's_ —name, but she could remember the almost bored diagnosis and treatment he outlined for her. She remembered the unsettling way his magic had felt when it probed at her consciousness to confirm what Lyall and she had told him.

"Hope." A hoarse voice called to her right, and she turned to face Lyall. Everything was still happening very slowly for her, but it seemed to be the opposite for Lyall. He looked as though he had aged an eternity in her absence. There were no tears in his eyes, but there was a deep fear and guilt. He reached out his hand for hers with hesitation, as if there was a chance she wouldn't have taken it.

He led her down a white, sterile hallway and Hope noticed that the harsh, strict chemical scent of cleanliness that was present in muggle hospitals was missing. Its absence made her feel worse. She kept thinking back to the potion vial she was given. The one she placed on her nightstand table for a full two weeks before drinking. The one full of magic.

 _It's my fault,_ she thought vaguely. The shadow attacking her son. Remus's screams. Lyall's pain and grief. Her vision started to blur, but she didn't say a word to Lyall for fear of slowing him down. Tears were running down her face and breathing was getting harder and harder. _Muggles aren't supposed to use magic._

She couldn't remember it happening, but the next moment that she was aware of her surroundings, she found herself seated in a chair while Lyall paced the floor in front of her. Remus was dying and it was all her fault. All she could think about were fairytale rules. About how everything magic came with a price, especially for those that didn't have it in the first place. Yellow eyes and sharp, dirty teeth stained with blood would haunt her forever.

"Remus?" she managed to ask, and Lyall stilled in front of her. He cautiously sat beside her and took her hand. She didn't look at him. She couldn't.

"I'm sorry," she heard him say. "I'm so, so sorry. This is all my fault. I never should have…"

 _Your fault, my fault,_ she thought as she started crying harder. Magic from the fertility potion had given her the most wonderful son. And now magic was taking him away.


	7. Feather

**Worth the Wait**

 **Chapter Seven: Feather**

Summary: Sirius seemingly loses his soulmate mark, and Regulus's mark gets added to.

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Sirius didn't understand what was wrong. It had been over a week since anything new had appeared on his arm. All his drawings and questions went unanswered, even the ones he wrote specifically to Hope. R's birthday had come and gone without so much as a drawing from the other boy, which Sirius found extremely odd because he had been so excited to be five just like Sirius himself. But there was nothing written on his arm when he woke up on March tenth, and no response when Sirius had written 'Happy birthday' in his best handwriting either. It made him uncomfortable that there was no longer any splash of color on his arm. Sirius wondered briefly if he had imagined the almost year and a half long communication with his soulmate, but he quickly dismissed that thought. He didn't think he had enough of his own imagination to conjure up all the different colors R and Hope had used over the year. Grimmauld Place was grim and bleak at its brightest, forever enshrouded in an aura of gray. Even the sunshine that was rarely let in through the parlor window seemed to be muted.

It took a month of trying to communicate with R and Hope before Sirius stopped writing on his arm. He was tired of seeing only plain black ink there when he was expecting silly colors and messy handwriting and drawings. He wondered if he had said something wrong, and if R and Hope were purposefully ignoring him. He didn't think that was likely to be the case. Hope was nothing like his own mother, and Sirius figured if his own mother would ignore him (as she occasionally tended to do), Hope wouldn't. But he couldn't figure out why they weren't answering him.

"Sirius," Regulus's soft voice broke Sirius out of his thinking. They'd gotten closer ever since Regulus was allowed to be in lessons with Sirius. Finding Regulus in his bedroom or knocking on his door at night after dinner was starting to become routine. Turning to look at his little brother, he was confused as to why Regulus was holding out his left arm at him.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"There's two." Regulus's eyes widened as he explained, pulling back the sleeve ever so slightly so that Sirius could see that there were indeed two tiny little feathers on his brother's wrist.

Sirius felt something tremble inside his stomach and did his best to squash down the flare of jealousy he felt. "How?" he asked, but Regulus only shook his head. Sirius wasn't surprised that his brother didn't know. He doubted anyone really knew how soul marks worked since there were so many different kinds. He took Regulus's wrist in his hands, looking closely at the two feathers.

The first one was a plain drawing in black ink. The second one was slightly more elaborate, lined with more details, but still overall just as plain as the first. They were very close together, but not touching. He rubbed his thumb over both feathers, seeing if any of the ink would smudge. A small part of Sirius felt ashamed that he hoped it would. It didn't, and Sirius felt hollow at the realization.

"When did you get the second one?" he asked, returning his attention to his brother's face.

"I don't know," Regulus answered, voice soft and on the edge of tearful. Sirius couldn't remember ever hearing his brother's voice not sound like he was about to cry (or had just finished crying). He wondered if all little brothers were always such crybabies. He made a mental note to ask Uncle Alphard if Uncle Cygnus was like this as a child.

Sirius pulled the sleeve back over to the two feather tattoos on Regulus's wrist. "Don't show anyone, okay?" he instructed. He could already hear his mother's disdain and feel her annoyance and anger. Probably wiser for Regulus to keep this new development to himself. Sirius thought back to his own blank forearm and felt the jealousy come back with an envy.

"Why?" Regulus asked. Sirius blinked, unsure of how to explain to their mother to a toddler.

"It's a secret," Sirius said. "Our secret."

Regulus blinked and Sirius hoped he wasn't about to start crying. His eyes looked wet and shiny, but no other signs of distress were on his face. "Like your arm?" Regulus asked at last.

Sirius felt a painful lump in his throat as Regulus mentioned his arm. "Yeah," he whispered. He waited to see if Regulus would ask anything else about his arm. He was unsure of what he would tell Regulus. He still didn't want to believe that he'd lost R and Hope forever.

"Okay," Regulus said, and some of the tension left Sirius's body. "Can I…" Regulus started to say. He paused, and looked away from Sirius's face. Sirius waited, knowing that his brother sometimes required more time to put his sentences together. Or to get over his nerves and ask for what he needed.

Regulus, in addition to being perpetually teary, was always nervous and hesitant. Sirius tried to remember if something had happened, or if they had been raised differently, but he couldn't come up with anything. He had very little memory of what life was like before lessons, but he figured he was kept in isolation, away from his mother. She didn't seem like she had ever personally looked after Regulus, so he assumed she hadn't personally looked after him when he was younger. Perhaps Kreacher, the house elf that regularly tended to Regulus before his lessons and still even now, treated Regulus more harshly than he had treated Sirius? But if that were the case, Sirius doubted Regulus would be as fond of the old elf as he was.

Sirius could feel his nose scrunch up as he waited for his brother to continue speaking. Maybe Regulus was just weird. Kreacher was a miserable, unpleasant house elf, and anyone that liked him had to be weird.

"Can I sleep with you tonight?" Regulus finally asked.

Sirius raised both eyebrows in surprise. He studied Regulus, who was still avoiding his gaze in fear of rejection or nerves, Sirius didn't know exactly. If he let Regulus sleep in his room tonight, he'd have less time to focus solely on his arm in case Hope or R started writing him back. But then again, they hadn't written anything to him for a month. Not even something by accident, which used to happen quite often whenever R was practicing his letters.

"Sirius?" Regulus asked again, voice soft and barely there.

Sirius bit his lip. "Okay," he answered. He helped Regulus crawl underneath his covers and get comfortable. R wouldn't mind, he thought, if he took a while to answer when R finally wrote to him. R would understand. And then Sirius would politely ask about the month long silence, and hopefully find out what he did wrong so he'd never do it again. And then things would go back to normal, and he'd have his soulmate back, along with Hope.

"Thanks, Sirius," Regulus mumbled. Sirius got into bed next to Regulus, who had immediately shifted over to hug him. Sirius prepared himself for tears and wet clothing near where Regulus's face was, but they never came. Maybe Regulus was starting to grow up after all. Sirius hugged his brother back, unable to remember the last time he was physically affectionate with someone other than his brother. Sirius found that he didn't mind so much. He found that his bed was exponentially warmer than when he was in it alone and immensely more comforting. He briefly thought about R and if he was in bed right now, all alone. Sirius hoped not. He also hoped R knew that he missed talking to the younger Welsh boy. He hoped R would write back soon, as unlikely as that now seemed.

"Anytime, Reg," he whispered sleepily, making sure his brother was adequately covered before closing his eyes.

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/Thank you so much to everyone who's read and left a review! (Sorry I haven't done this earlier!) I love reading all of your thoughts about my writing!

/Also, yes, some of Remus's and Sirius's communication mayyy be a tad advanced for their age, but Remus gets bit when he's five, and I wanted them to have some contact before then, so. Also I figure Sirius would have lessons drilled into him from a very early age (Blacks have no use for babies and toddlers) so that's why he's a bit more advanced and more mature than Remus (who relies on Hope like 90% of the time when responding to Sirius with words instead of pictures).


	8. Aftermath

**Worth the Wait**

 **Chapter Eight: Aftermath**

Summary: After spending some time at St. Mungo's, Remus finally gets to go home.

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Remus woke up shortly after his fifth birthday in pain, though he had no idea what the date was. All he could remember from that day was a hot, burning itch on his left side, close to where his ribs were, and the fact that his whole body felt broken and wet, almost mushy. Like he was lying in puddle and he couldn't get dry no matter what he tried. His face was wet with tears, and though Remus didn't remember when he started crying, he knew he couldn't stop until the pain went away.

Remus didn't remember much of the night the monster visited his bedroom, but he knew it was important, and that it changed everything. Neither of his parents left his side for long after he was fully conscious, and they always seemed to be sad or crying, and Remus didn't understand it. They never told him what was wrong when he asked, and he was too tired to pursue it.

He was tired a lot these days. He couldn't remember his fifth birthday, but he wouldn't have been surprised if his parents told him that he had slept through it. It seemed like that was the majority of what he did now-sleep. He had trouble focusing sometimes, and he still couldn't get out of bed. There were too many bandages and he couldn't move properly. He was glad the pain was less than when he first woke up. It had been all he could feel.

"Remus?" He could hear his mother's voice. He opened his eyes and found her sitting beside his bed, looking worried. They had only been home for about a day or so, and Remus barely spent any time away from his own bed. The same could be said for his parents, who were constantly close to him. "Are you hungry, dear?" Her voice sounded so far away. Remus didn't understand why when she was so close to him.

"No," he mumbled, rubbing his right eye with his hand. "Bathroom," he said instead.

"Of course, sweetie." She moved towards him, and Remus could feel a kiss on his head. His parents had taken to giving him more hugs and kisses lately, though Remus wasn't sure it was necessary as he was never unhappy with the amount he'd gotten before. It was another thing he didn't quite understand.

"I've got it, Hope," he heard his dad say from the other side of his room. Remus couldn't remember if he had always been there or if he'd just come in. Both his dad and mother seemed to just fade in and out of his sight these days, and Remus could never tell for sure if they ever left him alone.

"Okay," his mother relented. He felt his dad walk over and gently pick him up. He felt another kiss on his head, from his dad this time, and he burrowed his face into his dad's chest. "I'll get some soup; he hasn't eaten in a while." He heard his mom leave the room.

"Hi Dad," he mumbled.

"Hi Remus." Remus could feel his dad's hand running through his hair, comforting him. The walk to the bathroom was short, and though Remus appreciated the help from his dad, he couldn't help but feel like a baby. He thought turning five would mean he'd get to do more things, not less.

"Can I write to Star yet?" Remus asked as he was being carried back to his bedroom. His mother came in a moment later with a tray with soup and more potion vials. His dad placed him gently back into bed, helping him sit up by positioning pillows behind him.

"I'm afraid not," his dad said. Remus frowned. He hadn't written to Star in such a long time, and he couldn't even see if Star was writing to him because his left arm was wrapped in bandages from his elbow up to the second knuckles of his fingers. He felt his dad's thumbs rub across his face, soaking up his tears and he realized he was crying. "I know you must miss him, but you have to get better, first, okay?" Remus sniffled and nodded. His father leaned forward and placed a kiss on Remus's forehead.

"He'll still be there when you get better, okay?" his mother said on his other side.

"Promise?" Remus asked, looking at her with tears in his eyes. His mother set down the tray carefully on his nightstand and sat beside him on the bed. He could feel the comforting weight of his dad leaning protectively against him on the other side. Remus liked being sandwiched between his parents, but he really wished his body wasn't covered in a variety of casts and bandages. And he wished he didn't feel so tired all the time either.

"He's your soulmate, sweetheart. He won't just go away." Remus guessed his mother was right about that. He looked up at both of his parents-soulmates, he thought-and smiled. "I know you're not hungry, but I need you to eat something so you can take your potions, okay?"

"Mmkay," Remus agreed and was rewarded with a kiss from his mother. He didn't understand why he had to take so many potions ever since he woke up in the hospital, but he knew they were important because his parents were insistent that he never miss a single dose. It seemed to make his parents feel better when he took them, so Remus didn't mind too much, even though some of them tasted awful.

Remus only managed about five spoonfuls of soup before he shook his head and refused to eat anymore. Then he quickly drank the two potion vials his mother handed him with help from his father. It wasn't long before he was asleep and dreaming of anthropomorphic stars, dogs, and lions.

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Hope looked over at Lyall and forced down the perpetual lump in her throat. "Do you think it'll work?" she asked, running one hand through Remus's hair slowly, soothing her son in his sleep. "The potion to keep him from turning into a werewolf?"

Lyall looked back at her with dark circles underneath his eyes. His face was starting to get pale and his beard was growing with the lack of personal care in the past few days. "I don't know," he said with so much pain her heart broke. "I'm s-" he started to say but stopped, remembering, no doubt, their conversation a couple of days ago. Lyall had told over and over again that what had happened to Remus-the monster that had come into her house and attacked him-was in no way her fault. He told her repeatedly that there wasn't a cosmic rebalancing of the universe because she had used magic to help her conceive a child when she was born without it. But she still couldn't stop apology after apology from stumbling out of her mouth like a drunkard out of a closing bar. Lyall hadn't stopped apologizing since before they came home from St. Mungo's either, and though she didn't understand what he felt he had to apologize for, she certainly understood the compulsion-the need to alleviate the guilt in whatever way possible. They had both made a promise to ban the word 'sorry' from their vocabulary after one too many apologies. Hope didn't know if that made things better or worse.

"He's going to be a werewolf, isn't he?" she asked.

"We don't know that for sure," Lyall said, but she could see the tears in his eyes, and she knew. "I'm.." Lyall looked helplessly at her, and she reached over to take his hand, holding it gently on top of Remus's body. "I'm afraid he's going to hate me," he whispered. I'm afraid you're going to hate me too, she heard. She also heard the silent confession that Lyall knew deep down that the anti-lycanthropic potions wouldn't work.

"He won't," she said immediately. I won't. I don't.

Lyall smiled at her, but it was filled with grief and sorrow. "Being a werewolf will make life so difficult for him," he said. Hope didn't doubt it. Lyall never talked too much about his job, but he had told her enough about the wizarding world's prejudice against magical beings and creatures. She had even seen their prejudice against muggles during the few times Lyall would take her and Remus to Diagon Alley. It was slightly better when they had visited one of the wizarding villages in Wales, but there was still always an undercurrent of condescension whenever a wizard had spoken to her.

"He'll have us." But even as she said it she wasn't sure if that would do Remus any good in the future. "He'll have you," she amended, looking at Lyall. He held her hand tighter.

"He'll have us," he repeated. "He'll need you. I'll need you, still."

Hope started crying. After the first night spent at the busy London hospital, Hope didn't think she'd ever have any tears left to shed, but it had become almost like a ritual now. It seemed like most of her conversations with Lyall ended up with her in tears. Whether it was out of guilt, a strange mix of love and depression, or self-hatred, Hope had gotten used to crying multiple times a day. it exhausted her but she couldn't seem to stop. She could feel Lyall shift carefully, mindful not to disturb Remus, and reach over with his other arm to pull her in, cradling her head against his shoulder. His other hand was still holding hers, his thumb rubbing gentle circles against the back of her hand.

"We'll get through this," he whispered against her hair. Hope tried to let herself believe him.

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Lyall had never considered himself to be a coward, despite not having been sorted into Gryffindor house, but he couldn't bring it upon himself to tell Hope the truth about Greyback. Telling Hope now meant he would have to tell Remus at some point in the future, and Lyall wasn't sure if that was a task he would ever be up to. He had tried to tell her, multiple times, if only to completely clear away her unfounded guilt, but all he could see was the hatred in her eyes (and in Remus's eyes too), and his throat would close up. Nothing could slip past his lips except for useless apologies. And now he couldn't even say that.

Lyall may not have been a coward, but he was deeply afraid and selfish. He didn't want to lose either Hope or Remus. It had taken him months to confess to Hope about their initial meeting with the boggart, and Lyall could feel this secret lodging deeper than that one ever had. He wondered, not for the first time since that fateful night, if things would have turned out different if he was a better man. To Hope. To his son whom he had cursed for the rest of his life. Even to the monster Greyback.

But as he felt Hope drift off to sleep against his shoulder and Remus shift against his side, mumbling a few nonsensical welsh alphabet sounds, he felt a deep, selfish love grip at his heart. In an alternate universe, Lyall figured, Remus wouldn't have been bitten by a werewolf because Lyall had kept a professional demeanor when dealing with Greyback, Hitchens, and Carter. But that alternate universe Lyall was most likely a better man than he was, and he would go on to be rewarded with a happier, carefree son. Looking down at Remus sleeping against him, Lyall also knew that in another alternate universe, Remus would not have survived Greyback's attack, and that Lyall would have lost both his son and his wife. Lyall didn't want to lose either of them. He didn't think he would survive by himself.

It wouldn't help either of them to know the truth about Greyback, he thought. And then he thought: coward.

He placed a kiss on Hope's head, and briefly let go of Hope's hand to grab Remus's right hand to hold in between his and Hope's. He'd rather be a coward for now if it meant being able to hold both the love of his life and his son.

He could only hope that they would forgive him someday when he finally told them the truth.


	9. Werewolf

**Worth the Wait**

 **Chapter Nine: Werewolf**

Summary: It's the night of the first full moon after Remus returns home from St. Mungo's. Sirius knows something is wrong, but he doesn't know what.

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Remus lost track of the days. He knew he spent a few days at the hospital they had to take the fireplace to get to, and then he came home in bandages and two hard casts (one on his left wrist and the other on his right leg), and then it was a few more days until he was completely able to see all of his limbs. He still couldn't move very well on his own though. Everything felt very weak from lack of use, and he was still tired all the time. But his mind was starting to clear, and he was starting to remember bits and pieces of that night before the hospital. Bright, angry yellow eyes that was in-between human and animal. He thought he could also remember a snout and long, sharp, dirty teeth, and an awful, awful smell—worse than that moment he was four and clumsy and knocked over one of the garbage bins and everything spilled out and the smell was so bad he cried. He tried very hard not to think of that night, but it always came back to him in his nightmares. He was glad his parents didn't leave him to sleep alone anymore.

He could tell something was different with his parents though. They seemed sad all the time, even when they were smiling or laughing with him, and he didn't quite understand it. He had tried asking if something was wrong, but they never admitted to anything. They also never left him completely alone. His dad was also spending more time at home. He always seemed to be in the house whenever Remus was awake. As a boy that adored his dad, Remus was glad for the extra time. He only wished he was more awake and had enough energy to run around with his dad instead of spending time reading stories. He usually fell asleep before they ever got to the end, and Remus had trouble remembering what the stories were even about.

His parents had told him that he was sick as an explanation for why he was feeling so weird after the hospitals. They still made sure he was taking each and every one of his potions too. Remus felt like the potions were making him worse, because he certainly wasn't getting better, but his parents kept insisting that the potions would help him.

Another distressing thing in Remus's life was the fact that Star wasn't writing to him anymore. Or if he was, he was writing whenever Remus was asleep, and erasing the ink before he woke. Remus didn't blame the other boy though, because he knew he was having a hard time even drawing nonsensical things on his arm with paint. He didn't like poking at his arm much. It pained him a little bit, and he figured it was because he was sick. He had tried to ask his mother for help once, but he couldn't stand even the softest markers against his skin. His mother had suggested that he wait until he felt better, and he reluctantly agreed. He only hoped Star would still be there.

It was almost a month after that night at the hospital that his dad had told him that he needed to spend the night outside the house. Remus didn't completely understand why, but he didn't argue.

"I'll be with you the whole time, okay?" his dad said as they were walking in the back garden. Remus had his head tucked into his dad's neck. He had felt extra tired and itchy all day, especially on his left side where the last bandage was still attached to his skin. It felt weird and was throbbing all day. The potions that he had to take had somehow made everything worse. He vaguely remembered crying, but he wasn't completely sure if it had happened. He really hoped spending the night outside of the house would help him get better. He was tired of being sick. And tired of the potions.

"Mum?" he asked weakly when he realized that his mother was absent.

"She'll be there in the morning, I promise. It's just…she can't be here tonight. But she loves you, okay?"

Remus didn't understand, but he nodded against his father's neck. At least his father was staying with him through the night. He could take comfort in that. Remus figured he must have fallen asleep during the walk in the backyard with his dad because the next thing he was cognizant of, he was being placed on the floor of the new mini house in the backyard. "Dad?" he asked, voice heavy with fatigue.

"I'm here, Remus. I'll be here, okay?" His dad rearranged the soft blanket on the ground and pillows around Remus. "You can sleep if you're tired, okay? I'll be right here when you wake up."

"Kay," Remus nodded and curled up against one of the large fluffy pillows. He felt his dad put the blanket over him to help keep him warm in the cold. Within seconds, he was back asleep.

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Sirius woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't fall back sleep. He didn't know if it was because of the extra body next to him in bed or the fact that he had forgotten to close his curtains and the light of the full moon had completely invaded his room. Regulus next to him shifted, and Sirius could feel his tiny toes kick him softly in the shin. Sirius huffed in annoyance. _R was lucky he didn't have a little brother_ , he thought.

His lower lip quivered as he thought of his Welsh soulmate. It had been around a month since Sirius had last seen anything on his arm, and he wondered if he ever would again. and in the meantime, Regulus had gotten an extra feather on his arm. Sirius didn't understand what made Regulus so special. Everyone seemed to like him better than Sirius, and he didn't get it. He wasn't the one that seemed to be constantly crying and had snot running out of his nose. Sirius turned in bed to get a better look at his brother. He supposed Regulus looked a lot like himself, except with chubbier cheeks. He wondered if that made Regulus seem cuter to the adults. Sirius reached out and poked one of the cheeks. No response. He supposed the fact that Regulus was better behaved than him was another factor in favor of the toddler. After all, he didn't think Regulus would go around poking people in their sleep. Sirius poked him again, for good measure. Regulus continued to sleep.

Sirius sighed and glanced around his room. He thought about getting up and closing the curtains, but he didn't want to leave the warmth of his bed. Regulus moved again, and for a moment Sirius thought his brother had woken up. Still sleeping soundly, Regulus had moved his left hand closer to his face and above the covers. His right arm was still slung loosely across Sirius's stomach. Sirius could clearly see both the feathers on his brother's wrist.

Sirius let out a tiny gasp as he realized that Regulus had gotten an addition to his soul mark. His heart started beating faster as his mind worked out a possible explanation for R's lack of communication. If an addition was possible, then subtractions weren't out of the realm of possibility. Sirius grew cold at the thought that something horrible had happened to R and that had somehow damaged their soulmate mark connection. Endless possibilities of horrible things raced through Sirius's mind, and he felt sick.

If something bad had happened to R, then…then that meant he couldn't write back to Sirius. Or he was writing, but Sirius wasn't getting anything on his arm. He wondered if that meant they weren't soulmates anymore, but quickly shook that thought from his head. He thought of his mother and her unmatched soul mark. It didn't disappear when she didn't meet him, and Sirius didn't think she was ever going to. She had married his father after all.

The only logical explanation, he decided, was that something bad had happened to R. He really didn't think it was like either R or Hope to ignore him if he had done something wrong, and now he felt silly for ever believing that. Regulus let out a whimper next to him, and Sirius tugged him closer. "It's okay, Reg. I'm here," he whispered. Tonight, he'd comfort Regulus in his sleep. And tomorrow, he would start figuring out what sort of bad things could happen that would interfere with soul mate marks. And then he would fix it. And then he would be able to talk to R and Hope again. And then everything would be okay.

Sirius let out a yawn as Regulus kicked him softly again. He was glad that he poked Regulus's cheek a second time.

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Hope wanted to hate magic, but doing so felt like the antithesis of everything she was. She had always been enamored with fairy tales, but finding herself in one, specifically one with no happy ending in sight, was not something she had hoped for. She paced the length of her living room, unable to sit still. She glanced out the living room window, able to see the newly built garden shed in the backyard where Lyall and Remus were. She wondered if the grass was always this bright underneath a full moon, or if she had simply never had a reason to notice it before. She knew each full moon from now on would haunt her for the rest of her life. She would never be able to ignore its presence.

She couldn't hear anything from the shed, but she suspected that Lyall had cast a silencing spell in order to make it so. She hoped the fact that she couldn't hear anything meant that both her boys were still alive. She didn't know if the spell would dissipate if something had happened to Lyall, but she hoped it would, if only to give her an indication that something had gone wrong. But as she strained her ears, all she could hear was the wind and some distant rustling. No screaming. Nothing to indicate that there was a fight going on or that anything was amiss in her backyard.

Hope looked at the moon again, wanting to hate it. But it was full and bright and so beautiful looking she couldn't reconcile the fact that it could potentially be causing her only child unimaginable pain. She wanted to go out to the shed and see if she could tell what was going on inside. But she had promised Lyall that she wouldn't. She knew that she couldn't do anything to help Remus at this point. All she could do was wait and make sure anything he needed in the morning was ready for him. All the pain potions were laid out alongside the wound care products. Something called dittany if she remembered correctly. And silver, which had thrown everything she knew about werewolves out the window. But then again, she supposed the fairytales she had grown up with were mostly false. She remembered feeing relief at the fact that if Remus was a werewolf, he couldn't be killed by something as easy to craft and buy as a silver bullet. Small miracles, Hope had thought at the time, though the image of her son being hunted like some kind of wild animal made her sick.

Hope looked at the clock and saw that it was only four in the morning. There were still at least a couple of hours before the full moon set. Lyall had told her to get some rest, but she found it impossible to sleep while there was a chance that Remus was going to be in pain. She thought back to this afternoon when he had finally broken down and cried about the potions he was taking, and Hope could feel her heart ache. Her eyes watered and her nose felt warm. Lyall and her had had a very hard discussion while Remus was asleep, and she had said what they were both thinking.

"These potions are only making things worse. They aren't helping him, and there's no proof that they've ever helped to prevent a werewolf transformation! They're hurting him, Lyall!" She remembered begging him to stop forcing the potions on Remus, and it didn't take much for Lyall to agree. She knew he had already resigned himself to the fact that Remus was a werewolf, and no amount of prophylactic potions would help prevent the lycanthropy that was already in his veins.

Hope refocused her attention on the shed, wishing that she could be there to hold Remus and reassure him that everything would be alright. But she trusted Lyall. She trusted that he would come back into the house in the morning, and then they would deal with whatever state Remus was in together.

She just wished morning would come sooner.

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Thanks to everyone for reading and leaving comments! I hope I haven't lost you guys in the month(?) I've been gone. I've been busy studying almost nonstop, and originally I wasn't planning on writing anything until after my final test in October, but I just couldn't resist. (I also didn't want to study anymore.) The next update won't be until after the test though, so maybe another around month wait, but then back to roughly once a week updates!

Story notes: I figure Lyall would be able to handle being in the same room as Remus in his wolf form because Remus is a child, and Lyall is a fully trained wizard in defense against magical creatures and beings. So that's why he's inside the shed with Remus instead of just locking his son inside and waiting outside.


	10. Study

**Worth the Wait**

 **Chapter Ten: Study**

Summary: Sirius attempts to find out more about soulmate marks.

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"But how do you know?"

Sirius huffed in annoyance. "Where else would it be?" he asked. Behind him, he could hear the rustle of Regulus's dress robe as he shrugged. Both brothers walked quickly and quietly, keeping close to the walls of the Black Manor. Below them, on the first floor, Sirius could still hear the dull string music and mindless adult chatter from the party his parents were hosting.

"What if it's not there? What if it's not anywhere?" Sirius could feel Regulus's hand reach for his arm as they turned a corner. He rolled his eyes. "What if someone catches us?"

"Everyone's downstairs, Reg," he responded, shifting his arm a bit to hold his brother's hand instead. "And Bella, Cissa, and Andy are all at Hogwarts, so they won't be here to interrupt us. This is our chance to sneak inside Father's study alone."

"But what if—"

Sirius abruptly stopped, causing Regulus to bump into him, disconnecting their hands in the process. He turned around as Regulus backed up, rubbing his pink nose. "Reg," he said, putting both hands on his brother's shoulders. "You don't have to come with me, okay? You can go back downstairs to the party."

Regulus shifted as Sirius stared at him. At six years old, the top of Regulus's head only came up to Sirius's chest, but his brother was still full of that nervous energy he possessed as a toddler. Regulus fidgeted as he tried to decide what to do. Sirius didn't know if it would be something Regulus would carry with him forever or if he would grow out of it.

"I won't be mad if you go back downstairs," he said. Disappointed and lonely, he thought, but not mad. Ever since he had lost contact with R, he had found himself increasingly glad for Regulus's companionship, even if it was at times annoying and inconvenient and slow. But having one friend was better than having none, and Sirius would be appreciative of that whenever he remembered. Sirius waited for his brother to make up his mind.

Regulus shook his head. "I wanna help," he said at last.

Sirius nodded and smiled. "Okay." He took his hands off Regulus's shoulders and moved to turn around but paused. He held out his left hand to Regulus, which the younger boy took with a smile.

Together, hand in hand, the two brothers made their way to Orion Black's study on the third floor of Grimmauld Place. Approaching the big sturdy doors, Sirius could feel Regulus pause behind him. Taking a deep breath, Sirius reminded himself that his father was still downstairs, entertaining guests with his mother. He squeezed Regulus's hand and felt glad when he felt Regulus return the pressure. Lifting his right hand, Sirius carefully grabbed the silver door handle and pushed it open, revealing his father's private study. He could feel Regulus shift closer to him and hear his brother looking around frantically.

"Come on," Sirius said as he led Regulus into the study and closed the door. The study was slightly smaller than Sirius had remembered from the rare occasions that his father let him inside his study to talk to him alone. Both walls on either side of him and Regulus were lined from top to bottom with shelves of thick tomes that Sirius assumed contained ancient magic. His father's desk stood straight in front of him, almost flush with the opposite floor to ceiling glass window from where he was standing. It was a simple, glossy wooden desk with neatly arranged pieces of parchment and various quills and inkwells on top. A dark leather chair sat behind it, blocking most of the window. It looked less intimidating without his father sitting in it. The whole study was dim, much darker than the hallway they had both entered from, and the night sky from the window offered no additional light.

Feeling a tug on his left hand, Sirius turned his attention back to his brother. "How do we get to the books on the top shelf?"

Sirius shrugged. "Maybe we won't need them?" He hadn't meant for the inflection in his voice to rise towards the end, but as he spoke and looked up at the tall shelves, he couldn't help but hope they wouldn't need any of the books beyond their reach. "Do you want to split up or—?" Sirius turned to look at Regulus and stopped when his brother vehemently shook his head. We could cover more books if you took the other side, he thought sourly. Sirius let out a sigh. "Together then? You'll make sure I don't miss anything?"

"Yes please," Regulus said.

Tugging his brother along, Sirius moved to stand in front of the bottom shelf on the right wall furthest away from his father's desk. "Right, so we should probably look for something about ancient magic? Or maybe rituals? Or, erm," Sirius paused. He frowned and scratched his forehead along his hairline. "You don't think there'd actually be a book completely devoted to soulmate magic, do you?" he asked.

Regulus shrugged and shuffled closer to Sirius. "I don't think Mother would keep it in the house," he said.

"But this is Father's study," Sirius replied. "Mother doesn't even go in here." Regulus merely shrugged again, and Sirius let out a huff of annoyance. "Alright, you take this shelf." He pointed to the bottom shelf. "And I'll take the one above it. Just look for whatever you think might have it, I guess."

Sirius tilted his head slightly as he read the titles on the spines, silently trying to determine if it was worth the effort to take from the shelf and open. History of the Pixies, Translating Ancient Fae Magick into Modern Use, Enchanted Weapons of the Ancients. Sirius furrowed his brows as he kept reading, wondering if his whole scheme was going to be proven to be worthless. None of the titles so far sounded like they would provide any insight as to how soul mate marks worked. Or why they existed. Or what the different marks even meant. Or, his eyes turned briefly to his brother, why some people kept having theirs grow without meeting anyone new. Sirius resisted the urge to rub his left forearm.

"Sirius," Regulus whispered with urgency in his voice. "We need to leave."

"What? Why?" He couldn't believe that they had just gotten into the study and Regulus already wanted to leave.

"I don't like it here," was the tense reply.

Scrunching up his face in frustration, Sirius looked at his brother and followed his line of vision. He crouched down to get a better look at the bottom shelf, and Regulus's grip on his left hand tightened. Fawley's Complete Bestiary, Sewlyn's Hunting of Dark Creatures, Trepius's Guide to Differentiating Between Blood and Flesh Rituals. Tentatively, out of a morbid curiosity he didn't know he possessed, Sirius reached out to touch the third book. As if sensing his presence, the book shifted slightly, and Sirius could have sworn he heard it let out a pained growl. As his fingertips made contact with the spine of the book, what felt like a stinging hex went through Sirius, traveling from the edges of his fingertips to his spine. He instantly recoiled and stumbled back, grateful for Regulus to keep him balanced.

"Please," he heard Regulus whisper. "There's more of them here. I don't like it."

Sirius nodded distractedly, letting himself be pulled by Regulus away from the bookshelf.

"Wait," Sirius stopped once they reached the door of the study. "What about—" He paused, unsure as his right hand drifted over to his left arm.

"I don't think it's here, Sirius," Regulus whispered.

Frowning, he nodded, allowing Regulus to guide him to the door. His heart sunk at the thought that he would get no closer to finding out what went wrong with his connection to R, but he knew Regulus was right. The answer wasn't likely to be in his father's study. As the boys moved towards the door, something on the other bookshelf wall caught Sirius's eye. "Wait Reg," he said, resisting Regulus's pull towards the study's doors.

On the fifth shelf from the bottom, slightly out of Sirius's reach, roughly in the middle of the wall, lay a book on its side. It was an immediate contrast to every other book placed carefully upright on the shelves, and Sirius wondered how he hadn't seen it before. He walked closer to it, pulling a nervous Regulus along with him. "A compilation of treatises on soulmates," Sirius read the title out loud. His eyes lit up in excitement. He could feel Regulus tugging on his hand in an attempt to get his attention, but he ignored it. This was it! It was here, all along, and now he could finally find a way to talk to R again.

"Sirius!" Regulus hissed at him, still tugging and trying his best to pull his older brother away from the shelf and towards the doors.

"Reg, stop!" Sirius resisted. "Look! This is what I've been looking for!" He pointed to the book on its side, his index finger barely two inches from touching the spine that edged just slightly over the shelf.

"No! We have to leave!" Regulus whispered back, fear in his voice and his eyes bright with anxiety.

"No!" Sirius said angrily, trying to rip his left hand out of Regulus's tight grasp to no avail. Regulus held on, as if his life depended on it. "This is the reason we came here in the first place!" Sirius tried to reason with his little brother. Of course Regulus wouldn't understand, he thought bitterly. He hadn't lost his first friend. He didn't even have a friend besides Sirius!

"Please—" the younger boy tried to say but was interrupted by both of the study doors opening and the sound of giggling. Both boys looked at the entrance to the study in surprise, and Regulus stumbled backwards into Sirius. Catching his brothers by the shoulders, Sirius tensed at the sight of his father and a party guest in the doorway.

"Boys," Orion's deep voice seemed to echo throughout the study. He walked forward, Sirius could feel Regulus attempting to move backwards until his back was flush against Sirius's chest. The bright light of the hallway made his father look like a dark, looming shadow in the dim study. Sirius couldn't make out his father's face, but he knew it had to be displeased at the least.

"What are you two doing in my private study?" His father stressed the word private, and Sirius vaguely realized he had never been punished by his father before. It always seemed to be his mother that dealt out the punishments, and he wondered what types of punishment his father would dole out. He wondered if it would be better or worse than his mother. He had never seen his father's cruelty firsthand, but it had to have been there. He was married to his mother after all.

"Looking for a book," Sirius replied, trying to keep his voice steady. There was no point in lying. Bella had once told him that all Blacks were taught to be excellent Legilimens, and while Sirius hadn't believed her at the time, he didn't want to risk it now. He and Regulus were already in trouble for being in the study. He didn't want to add being caught in a lie.

"And books in our general library didn't suffice?" Orion said, and a small laugh from the doorway reminded Sirius that there was another person with them.

"Orion," the figure said from the doorway. Sirius could make out a silhouette of a feminine dress robe and a soft, velvety voice that definitely did not belong to his mother. The figure came closer to his father, and Sirius waited to see if this would be an ally or foe. "Why don't you let the boys go? They'll pretend they were never here, and no one will get in trouble? Hm?" She spoke to his father, but Sirius could feel her eyes on him and Regulus. He could feel Regulus nod, eager at the opportunity to avoid punishment and escape the study. "Regulus agrees, don't you dear?" she asked.

Regulus nodded again. "Y-yes Ms. C-carrow," he stuttered.

Sirius squinted at the figure in an attempt to see her facial features more clearly, but she was still unrecognizable to him. He could see her hand move to touch his father on the shoulder, and Sirius suddenly realized he could never recall his parents ever touching once another. He didn't know quite what to make of this information, but he watched as his father turned to look at Carrow before redirecting his attention back to him and Regulus.

"You two are dismissed. Not a word to anyone, understood?" Orion said as he stepped aside, allowing the boys a clear passage to the open doors of the study.

"Yes sir," Sirius and Regulus said in unison. The brothers made their way out of the study, Orion following them to the door.

"You two are to go downstairs back to the party, where you have been all night. Is that understood?" In the brighter hallway, Sirius was able to see his father's face clearly as he stood in the dark study, and the look of cold anger had settled behind his grey eyes urged Sirius to mindlessly agree to his father's demands.

"Yes sir," he and Regulus repeated again.

Orion gave both his sons one last look before nodding slightly and closing both the study doors, leaving the boys alone in the hallway. It was only then that Sirius could feel how tense he was and consciously relaxed his muscles.

"Sorry," Regulus whispered next to him. "I tried to warn you," he said, biting his lower lip and fidgeting with his hands, unsure of what Sirius's reaction would be.

Sirius let out a long, slow exhale and reached to grab one of his brother's hands in his. "It's okay," he said dejectedly. He knew they weren't ever going to get a second chance to go back into his father's study alone. It would most likely be locked and warded now that his father had caught them in there once. He felt a lump in his throat at the thought of the book that was so close to him. "Let's just go back downstairs," he said.

The next morning, on his way to his lessons in the library, Sirius walked past his father's study and was unsurprised to find that the silver handles on the doors had both disappeared, and the solid wood wouldn't budge, even if he put all his weight against them. Sirius rubbed absentmindedly at his left arm as he continued his way to the library.


End file.
